


quis ut michael

by kyrilu



Category: Dominion (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-14
Updated: 2014-08-14
Packaged: 2018-02-13 03:22:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2135187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyrilu/pseuds/kyrilu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	quis ut michael

1.

A long time ago, he would have thought that this sounded more like an affair for Gabriel--the matter of a chosen child. It was Gabriel who had gone to Mary; it was Gabriel who had gone to Zacharias.

(There was, too, that boy in the desert who changed how Michael saw what was right and what was wrong.)

Gabriel is a messenger and the babe is a message. Their father's last message. Yet Michael very well knows that this is a message that should not be shared or delivered to his brother.

Michael saves Alex Lannon with nothing more than his hope that he will not be the storm and the flood of the world, this time.

 

2.

The child touches his wings, small hands on feathers. Jeep, covered in blood and sweat, looks at Michael and laughs.

 

3.

After the war, no one prays to his father or to angels any longer. Gabriel's followers establish themselves later, after a time of relative peace passes. The only idol that the people of Vega have is Alex Lannon although they don’t even know his name.

Michael watches the child. Michael was never destined for tasks like these--he is not an annunciator like Gabriel, nor a guardian of children’s souls like Lailah. But there is no divine force for Alex Lannon otherwise, so Michael watches.

When Jeep is gone, the child is left to the tunnels.

One night, his first night in the tunnels, Alex is scared and cold. It would be easy for Michael to fly down from the rooftop he’s perched on, out of the shadows. It would be easy to reassure him that he is being protected, and that he has a future awaiting him. To fold his wings over the boy.

Michael doesn’t go. He tells himself that this will make Alex Lannon strong.

Alex, the little one, huddles within himself. He screws up his face and cries for his father.

Then he rubs his eyes, and he starts to whisper.

Michael stills. He can feel the words reverberate through him, like warmth. Like the same touch of the child’s hand on feathers. _Lord, have mercy on us. Christ, have mercy on us. Lord, have mercy on us…_

_Most glorious attendant of the Divine Trinity, pray for us. Standing at the right of the altar of the incense, pray for us. Ambassador of Paradise, pray for us. Glorious prince of the heavenly armies, pray for us. Leader of the angelic hosts, pray for us._

Alex Lannon is praying to him. He doesn’t say the line with Michael’s name, but these are Michael’s titles. His names and his epithets. He hasn’t thought of himself as any of those things, lately, but they are what make up the archangel Michael.

_The standard-bearer of God’s army, pray for us. Defender of divine glory, pray for us. First defender of the kingship of Christ, pray for us. Strength of God, pray for us. Invincible prince and warrior, pray for us._

“Jeep,” Michael murmurs, softly, “what did you teach him?”

He knows Jeep. He must have sat his son down with him, one day, and told them if he ever wanted help, if he ever needed someone and he wasn’t there, that there was someone else. All he needed were these words. This litany. Even if Alex doesn’t know exactly what they mean.

Michael can feel the lines of the prayer fill up his body and his bones. For the first time in awhile, he feels like an angel. He wants to stretch out his wings, and remember heaven and Gabriel and Uriel and his father and the others, and recall the times when he was a subject of prayer.

The humans had called him a saint. They had made prayers and litanies to him, novenas and songs and chaplets. They had made paintings and stained glass windows in his image. These things are all forgotten now.

Alex finishes: _Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us._

Michael still does not go to him.

He has never been more honored, or more ashamed. In the end, he uses his influence to strengthen the number of soldiers that patrol that area, but he knows that it’s not enough. He uses his influence to eventually have Alex recruited into his corps, but he knows that it’s not enough.

There is still that night, when the child is lonely and cold and afraid, when Michael did not go to him. And there are the many nights after that.

Alex Lannon, finding his litany unanswered, does not pray to Michael again.

 

4.

He watches the child grow, and fight, and strive. He wishes that his father had left words for him, as He had left Alex the tattoos even if the boy doesn’t bear them at the moment.

Michael often finds himself going back to another source. One of the oldest sources--a vision sent to the prophet Daniel.

_At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time, your people--everyone whose name is founded written in the book--will be delivered._

This is a promise of triumph. _Arise, arise_ , Michael tells himself when he looks from his tower at the city of Vega before him. Arise, arise. As he had driven out Lucifer from heaven, and as he will face another brother, yet again.

Even if it hurts. Even if he still remembers how it felt like to share the entirety of his self, his consciousness, with Gabriel. The scriptures never said anything about the serpent of Revelations being his brother, and he hopes with every fibre of his being that this is not what Gabriel is. He thinks that if he had suggested this role to Gabriel, before the war, before the Lord had left, Gabriel would have scoffed at him. He would have laughed. _I’m no snake, Michael. Do I look like one?_

Michael cannot control his dreams--he dreams now, in a human body. They are dreams in which Alex Lannon brings salvation to everyone. The world is bright and no longer desolate. His father is back, and Gabriel is inexplicably there _,_ hailing his return with the clarion call of his trumpet. The humans will live out this flood, and they will pray again.

 

5.

Michael is a warrior. He knows this role very well. He is comfortable leading his Archangel Corps, and he has a lieutenant, an angel, watch over Alex.

Alex is no longer a boy. He is a man, a V-2 in the terms of Vega, hardened by his life as a orphan. He is strong as Michael had hoped, both physically and mentally. He has a strong will, often clashing with his superiors, and Michael has to step in behind the scenes to straighten out certain conflicts. But he is a good soldier. He is _good_ , and Michael knows why God had chosen him.

There is a child that Alex protects. A girl with a quavering voice named Bixby.

It is one of the greatest ironies of the world. Alex can give to Bixby what Michael could not give to him. (If Gabriel were here, this is another thing that he would have laughed at. Uriel would have rolled her eyes at him and called him hopeless. Then she would have stepped between them both, seeing Michael glare, and halt another argument, yet again.)

Michael continues to watch. He sees Alex hug the child. Feed her, and wrap a blanket around her shoulders. His lieutenant has fallen in love with Alex, a love that Alex returns, and Michael sees how they look at each other. Later, Alex falls in love with the princess of the city.

 

6.

The night after Michael first puts the whip to Alex’s back, he wonders how Alex’s bare skin looks underneath. He wonders how his chest would look like, covered in the tattoos that Jeep had taken, lines snaking from front to back.

 _This is where my redemption lies_ , Michael thinks.

 

7.

Arise, arise.

Alex does.

Michael doesn’t. He is not a messenger, nor a guardian, nor a warrior for humankind.

The humans have a legend that the archangel Michael accompanies them when they are at the last hour of their death. It's is merely that--a legend. And Michael looks down at Becca's still body, and the human corpses beside her, and doesn't stay to mourn.

Michael is an angel. He is an angel in a way beyond the way Alex had asked him to be in prayer, and beyond the role that he had given himself after God had disappeared. He is an angel who was this world’s great flood, and he can easily become the flood for the second time.

He goes to Lucifer, the enemy he had defeated in the war of heaven.

Lucifer throws back a question at Michael, with a wry smile, in greeting, “ _Who is like God?_ ”

Michael had been so proud, in the past. Scornful of this Morningstar who had defied their father, who had wanted power and glory and godhood.

He is tired, now, and angry. He doesn’t want to care about the desperation in Alex’s eyes. He doesn’t want to dwell over Becca, or Vega, or the whole lot of them. He doesn’t want to think of the smile Gabriel had given him through the glass cell. He doesn't want to think about the pain in Louis' voice when he asked him to end his life.

“He’s gone,” Michael tells Lucifer, simply. This is a hypothetical that lacks definition. It has been rendered meaningless. And so, too, perhaps, are the scriptures and predictions of Daniel and Revelations.

This is not battling the snake as it is allying with him.

Michael falls to his knees, and offers Lucifer his sword.


End file.
